


Steady Thy Laden Head

by tirraterra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hufflepuff!Harry, M/M, also hannah abbott is going to be harry's BFF in case that sweetens the pot for anyone, be amazed at my writing prowess, i named some of harry's housemates after hufflepuff members from the lego video game, in our heart of hearts, its from a keats poem guys even i thought i could do better than that, so i can write about house relations from a hufflepuff standpoint, so you know, the dream we all dream, title is a cheap work in progress suggestions needed, yeah i should be writing my capstone right now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:45:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5213309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tirraterra/pseuds/tirraterra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Our faces are our greatest weapons, Mr. Potter, and yours most of all.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady Thy Laden Head

The train station bustled with noise and color, baggage carts thundering over the stone and metal grates. Harry tried not to look lost as he leaned hard on his own cart’s handle, pushing it past the edge of the crowd to bring it to the edge of the walkway. Across the tunnel hung the sign ‘Platform 10’ in bold letters, and to its left he could see the edge of ‘Platform 9’ hanging in perfect symmetry.

Inside her cage Hedwig hooted softly as they came to a rest out of the flow of traffic. He reached through the bars to tickled the feathers at her breast and blinked at the stinging sensation in his throat. No matter where he looked, he couldn’t see any platform listed like the one on his ticket, and all Harry could think about was having to go back to the street and find a pay phone and call his Aunt and Uncle to ask them to pick him up, because the train that was going to take him to his magic school didn’t exist. The tightness in his chest was growing unbearable, and all he could do was swallow and look between the signs hanging meters above his head and at his dusty trainers and the torn up hem of his trousers and swallow again. 

Even his cart, which he had been so excited to get to use for his baggage after a station porter had spotted him awkwardly hauling his trunk and Hedwig’s cage through the main entrance and helped him load it, was suddenly big and awkward and embarrassing to drag about now that he no longer had a destination. Instead all it did was draw attention to the ragged, no-good boy loitering in a train station, taking up space and bothering decent men and women on their way to work. All Harry wanted, abruptly, was to be back in his cupboard, where he couldn’t be a bother and nobody would see him cry about not getting to go to a school that wasn't real.

Even Hedwig was beginning to look distressed, he noticed miserably as the snowy owl screeched and fluttered restlessly at the clanging noise of an incoming train. He felt a sob rise in his chest.

“Dear me,” came a woman’s voice, low and rich. A hand set itself atop his head and Harry jumped, sniffling and turning to look up at the source of it. “Harry Potter. Whatever is a child such as yourself doing all alone and surrounded by this muggle filth?” 

Harry’s first thought was that this woman had the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Liquid dark eyes and skin as deeply colored as Aunt Petunia’s mahogany jewelry box, the woman peered down at him without a bow to her shoulders and her neck straight as a board, instead looking through her bottom lashes as though even opening her eyes fully was an effort not worth going to. Harry had never seen someone wearing fur in real life, but the dark mantle the woman had wrapped about her shoulders and tucked into the crook of her elbows looked like the softest, glossiest thing in the world. 

“I...I’m sorry—I don’t know what that is, ma’am.” He hiccuped and tried to tilt his head up further to judge her facial expression. He realized her hand was still resting on his head, and felt a deep sense of shame at how dirty his hair must feel. His aunt had kept him locked in his cupboard for the last few days leading up to departure. He curled his arms around his waist.

The woman wasn’t smiling before his words, but even then her face seemed to grow cooler. “Do you have guardians with you, Harry Potter?” 

He shook his head, felt her hand shift against his hair at the motion and froze awkwardly. “No, ma’am. My uncle dropped me off…” His earlier desolation returned in full force as he was reminded the reason his relatives had abandoned him at the station that morning. He felt his eyes prickle, and though he tried to smother the sensation back the first few tears began to drip down his face. He scrubbed desperately at his eyes with a sleeve.

“Stop that, child.” The woman ordered, and Harry hiccuped violently, but then she lifted her hand from his head and caught his wrist in elegant fingers. “Rubbing at your face will only make your eyes swell. Why aren’t you on the train already?” 

Harry’s whole frame stilled. “The train—you know where the train is?” 

The woman released his wrist “The Hogwart’s Express is directly behind you, Mr. Potter.” She gave him a considering look. “You were not given instructions on how to board?” 

Harry wheeled around to stare at the platforms behind them, but could see only blank stone pillars and started when he felt hands settle on his shoulders. A cloud of perfume engulfed him as the woman leaned forward over his head. A fine hand raised itself from his shoulder to point delicately at the wall. 

“The platform nine and three-quarters is through that illusion, Mr. Potter. This is to protect our platform from intruding muggles, whilst allowing families of less than ideal ancestry access to the train, should they choose not to apparate or floo or—“ the woman’s voice arched strangely here, “be unable to do so.”

Harry had no idea what it meant to floo. “H-how do I get onto the platform, please ma’am?” 

“You walk on.” She said, before stepping around him and withdrawing a long, narrow stick of wood— _a wand!_ —from the folds of her coat. She tapped his cart handle with it sharply before immediately tucking it away again. Then she reached out and, with one hand gloved in black leather, nudged the front of the metal contraption piled high with Harry’s trunk and Hedwig’s cage. It turned as easy as if it were made of air, rotating smoothly to face the pillar between Platform 9 and 10. 

“When you’re ready, you may simply walk through the stone, and your magical blood will enable you to pass through the barrier spell. So long as you are touching the cart, it and its contents—“ she indicated Hedwig’s cage, “will go along with you.” 

Harry gazed disbelievingly at the pillar, but remembered the stones of Diagon Alley’s entrance spilling away like water on either side before Hagrid’s frilly pink umbrella, and felt some of his anxiety fade. “Just right through?”

“Right through.” The woman confirmed, before stepping to the side of him and leaning downward. She brushed a bit of hair away from his eyes and Harry instinctively held his breath at how close her face was, fine and cold. “And when you get on the train, Harry Potter, you might find my son. He will get you all the way to Hogwarts, should you encounter any further obstacles.” 

“I don’t want to be any trouble,” he replied meekly, glancing over at his cart in order to avoid her stare. 

“You won’t be.” She rose back up to her full height. “My son is a first year as well, so you will be going the same direction. He boarded towards the back of the train, so look for him there. If not, find him after the term starts and introduce yourself.” Harry couldn’t imagine introducing himself to an stray cat, let alone anyone related to this strange and stunning lady. “He will be very helpful for you, and you him.” He very much doubted anyone would benefit from his presence, but was far less willing to deny the woman’s words outright. 

“Yes ma’am,” he murmured. He started as she reached out again with long, slender fingers, and could barely believe it as she raked a portion of hair back from his temple, tucking it behind his ear. Her hand brushed the remaining mess across his forehead, leaving him feeling bare and exposed beneath the suddenly bright lights of the station.

“And keep your hair out of your face. Our faces are our greatest weapons, Mr. Potter, and yours most of all.” She stepped back from him. “Go, through to the platform. I’ll watch you cross over, but then I have an appointment with a colleague of mine in muggle London to catch.”

Harry hesitated before her suddenly brusque tone, and turned back to the wall. He thought for a moment he could actually feel the pressure of her gaze on his back, pressing him forward. He took one step, then another towards the unwavering stone before him, and just before the front of his cart hit the barrier he heard her voice ring out over the noise of the station—

“When you find him, Mr. Potter, my son’s name is Blaise Zabini. Tell him his lady mother sent you to him.”

—and then he was through.

—

The whole world felt far too loud after he stumbled to a stop on the other side of the pillar, an unfamiliar name echoing through his head and a billowing red train before him. In addition to the new roar of people and mechanics that seemed somehow worse in the absence of the strange woman’s presence, there was a screeching and howling of animals that filled the platform’s space, entirely unusual from the sound of King’s Cross on the other side of the wall. 

The cart slid so easily when Harry pushed forward that he almost fell over, catching himself only just. _Magic_ , his mind whispered, and he felt himself suddenly flush with excitement—with relief—when he realized he was here, he could get on the train, he didn’t have to call his aunt and uncle and go back home to his cupboard and give up all his new books and send Hedwig away.

As he drew closer to the side of the train, the words _HOGWARTS EXPRESS_ stood out starkly on its side in black lettering. He made it to one of the stairways, and a nearby station assistant jumped forward to haul the trunk up into the train, passing Harry Hedwig’s cage after he clambered in after it. 

Harry turned back after the owl’s cage was positioned safely in the corridor. “Thank you,” he murmured tentatively to the porter, and the man’s— _wizard’s!_ —face took on a strange cast. 

“You—“ 

There was a burst of sound from down the train a ways away, and the man cursed and jumped from the steps. Harry turned back around, awkwardly, and peered both ways down the inside of the train. The corridor stretched left and right along the length of it, and for a moment he was caught in indecision. 

_“He boarded towards the back of the train, so look for him there.”_

Harry paused, unsure. The scent of the woman’s perfume and her glossy dark furs lingered again in his mind, and Harry was suddenly afraid to search out her son on the off chance that he too would smell like magic and the sort of wealth his aunt had always dreamed of. Nothing in the world would be as embarrassing, he thought, than to introduce himself to a boy like that in ruined trainers and unkept hair. 

He turned right anyway.

The farther down the train he walked, dragging his now heavy trunk with him and hoisting Hedwig’s cage as high as he could, the quieter it got. There were less exterior doors back here, and less open compartments as well. It occurred to him then that he wasn’t brave enough to open the closed compartment doors with occupants behind him, and unless Blaise Zabini was for some reason standing outside in the corridor there was no way Harry was going to be able to follow through with the woman's wishes. It felt awful, somehow, that the first promise he got to make willingly in his life he was going to ruin so quickly. Perhaps he really was as useless as the Dursleys always said, he thought glumly, and began to move towards the closest empty compartment he could see, just as the door directly beside him snapped open.

“Oh!” Harry almost fell over and the girl in the compartment jumped back in an effort not to bowl into Hedwig’s cage. “Watch it!” 

“Sorry…” he winced, and pulled his trunk further up. The girl was around his age, just a little bit taller with dark, shoulder-length hair. She glared and stepped dramatically past the edge of his trunk in a manner Harry felt was a bit unnecessarily showy. 

“Pick a compartment already, mudblood, you can’t just loiter in the—“ She fell silent, and Harry peeked up even as he struggled to drag his belongings farther down the corridor without banging Hedwig into the next door over. _“Hey.”_

“Um,” he replied smartly. 

The girl’s face contorted into a befuddled expression. “What’s your name?”

“Pansy!” 

The new voice cut off Harry’s reply even as a brunette emerged from inside the compartment. The second girl was taller even then Pansy, and wore wizarding robes in a deep green color.

“What’s the hold up?”

Pansy turned to look at her. “Nothing, Daphne, I just—“ She paused, and glanced at him. Harry tried to make himself as small as possible. The last time he had spoken to a girl his age, she had yelled at him for taking too long to finish a puzzle in primary.

Daphne stepped fully out of the compartment. There was a moment of silence before it occurred to Harry that he might be meant to introduce himself.

“H-hello—“ 

“You’re—“ Daphne began at the same moment, and Harry cut himself off in a panic and looked at the floor. The carpeting was a worn-out burgundy, darker at the edges where it met the interior wall.

“Hey,” Pansy said, and when he glanced up at her she had crossed her arms over her chest. “I asked you what your name was.” Her eyebrows were raised high, but there was something inexplicable in her expression, and beside her Daphne made a noise that Harry didn't quite understand, before leaning back into the compartment.

 _“Blaise,”_ she said softly, and Harry’s pulse jumped as a third individual arose from inside the compartment. The scent of the woman’s perfume returned to him as clear as if she were in the corridor with them. 

He barely registered Pansy speaking, and started when she reached out and knocked against the top of his trunk. “You’re Harry Potter, aren’t you?” she asked, and Harry was getting awfully tired of people knowing him before they’d even introduced themselves. 

“Yes,” he replied cautiously. “And—and you are?” 

“Pansy Parkinson,” she said almost absentmindedly, her eyes fixed on his face. He glanced awkwardly at her friend, who was looking at him with her mouth parted slightly. 

She shut it when she realized he was watching. “Daphne, Daphne Greengrass,” and she said it like she was in one of Aunt Petunia’s old black-and-white movies about wealthy young women and rakish detectives. 

The dark-skinned boy was still standing silently in the doorway to the compartment, and Harry considered his existence up to this point. He thought of dirty hair and scuffed shoes and torn up clothes and his aunt pinching his arm and his uncle hollering at him through the cupboard vent, and over all of that dark liquid eyes peered down at him through the bottom lashes of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

_“And when you get on the train, Harry Potter, you might find my son”._

“And—you’re Blaise Zabini.” He managed to choke out, hands shaking and white-knuckled around his trunk handle.

The boy’s faced flashed in something like surprise, before a lazy look seemed to creep over him again. “Ah.” 

Harry drew heavily upon the memory of the perfume's scent, curling around him. “Your mother…asked me to introduce myself. Um, hello.” He bit his lip, flushing terribly.

This time the boy did look surprised, and for a full few seconds no one said anything. “How do you know Lady Zabini?” The taller girl finally spoke. 

“She helped me get onto the platform.” 

Suddenly, Pansy laughed. “No she didn’t. There’s no way Lady Zabini would help you onto the platform." 

At her tone, Harry felt something cold drop into his stomach. 

"She’d never cross to that side of the barrier. That’s muggle London, and Lady Zabini abhors filth like that. You're lying to us.” Her lips pulled into a sneer.

Daphne didn’t seem to react for a moment, before she too wrinkled her nose. “That’s true…my mother said Lady Zabini specifically avoids the muggle sectors, especially in England. Why would she have been on the other side of the platform?” She asked him. Her tone sharpened.

Harry stood in the corridor, clutching his trunk and Hedwig. He could barely move his throat to swallow it was so tight, and all at once he wished he’d never come to the back of the train, he wished he’d taken the first open compartment and forgotten all about his promise to Lady Zabini. If crying in front of the whole King’s Cross station was an awful feeling, he felt like he’d rather die than break down in tears in front of these two terrifying girls and the son of the woman who’d helped him through the barrier.

“Never mind,” he whispered, and didn’t even know if they could hear him. “Sorry.” And he yanked his trunk the short distance to the open compartment farther down, dropped Hedwig’s cage onto the empty seat and slid the door shut. 

He stood for several moments and staring at the half-closed curtain on the window and the scarlet benches, trunk wedged uncomfortably between the the door and his calves. And then, without even bothering to trying to get his luggage up to the racks, he sat down next to Hedwig, buried his head in his knees, and cried bitterly until the train started to move.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a capstone to write, guys. I have WIPs to raise from the dead. But then the spirit of Hufflepuff came to me and said 'hey, you. what about hufflepuff harry but also the zabinis?' and of course this felt very natural to me so i agreed.
> 
> i am an idiot. what do i know about writing continuous works that arent term papers? morgana's tits people


End file.
